A co-founder of Greenpeace, Rex Wayler, wrote last December: ‘We’re not going to recover from global recession by consuming more resources and energy. Growth cannot solve the problems created by growth.’ Austerity is the key to an environmentally friendly future. In today’s Times, Oliver Kamm brands this smug and inflexible assumption as counter-factual – that economic consumption and growth will drive human ingenuity to find alternatives to the finite and environmentally damaging carbon economy. Here are the important sections:
‘Green campaigners are rightly concerned with environmental degradation. There is copious evidence of global warming due to man-made emissions of carbon dioxide and other gases that trap heat.
For all that, environmentalism is a flawed idea. Its weakness is not that it lacks justice, but that it lacks a sense of priorities. “Save the planet” is an exhortation, not a policy, and it doesn’t get you far.
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